


Happens All The Time

by flowersforgraves



Series: BTHB [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Coping, Dissociation, Gen, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 07:11:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15967292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersforgraves/pseuds/flowersforgraves
Summary: South talks to a social worker.





	Happens All The Time

**Author's Note:**

> prompt from a friend: "oh dissociation w south dakota"
> 
> (card [here](https://flowersforgraves.tumblr.com/post/177921515881) \-- feel free to prompt me!)

South kicks her feet up on the desk insouciantly, just to piss off the so-called social worker. Removing her helmet, she shakes out her hair -- it needs another dye job, the color is fading -- and tosses the helmet onto the desk so he’ll have to move it to get to his notebook. As she does, she watches his customer service face become more and more strained, and she tries to keep her own face from showing her amusement.

 _Good afternoon, Agent South Dakota,_ he says. _My name is --_

She cuts him off. _Let’s skip the fucking pleasantries. I want to waste as little time here as possible._

He blinks, startled, and his professional smile starts to crack under the strain. _All right. When did the dissociation begin to become a problem?_

 _It’s not a problem,_ she says.

 _It’s because of traumatic experiences,_ the social worker says, scrolling through South’s psych profile file. _It’s a form of coping to make trauma more bearable. Your trauma isn’t a problem?_

She laughs in his face. _Listen_ , she says, swinging her legs down and leaning forward intently. I _don’t have trauma. I_ am _other people’s trauma. Have you ever seen a freelancer fight hand-to-hand with common soldiers? Because we kick their asses in our sleep._

It’s not rightly her saying that anymore. It’s someone who looks and talks and acts like South Dakota, but it’s not her. She -- the part of her that’s quintessentially _her_ \-- doesn’t inhabit the body she’d been born in for long stretches of time. Florida had done some armchair psychoanalysis on most of the freelancers, and she was never sure she bought into the medical jargon, but right now she’d rather be wearing a hole in the floor of the lunchroom as Florida asks her useless questions.

The fucker just looks at her. She stares back. She’s fully aware of what he’s trying to do -- she’s had enough experience with shrinks to know that he’s trying to psych her out. But she won’t break. He won’t get the satisfaction of knowing he’s disturbed her in the slightest.

South bares her teeth in the way North used to call ‘adorable’ and most of the other freelancers used to call ‘terrifying’. Her heart aches still when she thinks of them, and she lets herself slip out of her body, just a bit. _So when are you going to get bored of torturing me?_ she asks. _Just so I know how long I’ll have to wait to have dinner._

He looks at her, pitying. _I’m afraid we’ll be keeping you for observation overnight,_ he tells her. 

If the bastard has one ounce of sorry in him, South will eat her helmet. Were she fully present, she’d already be across the table with a hand around his throat for daring to feel sorry for her. As it is, she slides further into the empty spaces between emotions, curls her lip, and spits on the table. _No,_ she says, simple, matter of fact. _No, you won’t._


End file.
